On the twenty fifth day, Heitaro stepped out on the balcony overlooking his backyard.
He stepped down from the balcony to go into his garden, but when his foot landed where the stepping stone should have been, instead of a stone there was a big blue yokai instead!
Heitaro’s foot sunk into the monster’s belly, like soft mud. It was sticky, gooey, and cold.
Gross!
Heitaro wasn’t too happy about it either, but he managed to keep his cool.
On the twenty fourth day, a massive butterfly flew into the room and began fluttering around. Then, it split apart into thousands of tiny butterflies which filled the room.
Heitaro watched in awe.
In the evening, Heitaro went to light his lamp and brighten the room up. All of a sudden, FWOOSH! The lamp flared up in a huge burst of fire.
Then, the lamp transformed into a massive stone lantern. Blue and red flames licked around its sides.
Just as Heitaro began to wonder if he should do something about the fire, the lantern and its flames returned back to normal.
On day twenty three, Heitaro heard a great commotion coming from Gonpachi’s house. He went over to investigate.
All of the furniture, dishes, cups, and book were scattered about as if it was the aftermath of a big party. Oddly, though, Gonpachi was not home. Heitaro went inside to investigate.
In one area, the ceiling was sagging into the room. Heitaro poked it with his sword. The ceiling slid back up to where it should be.
That evening, a massive beehive larger than he had ever seen appeared above Heitaro’s bed.
The beehive began blowing colorful bubbles!
On the twenty second morning, Heitaro woke up to the sound of sweeping. Looking out into his living room, he saw that his broom was standing on its own, and sweeping the house all by itself!
Heitaro couldn’t help but laugh. What a great ghost to have!
On the other hand, that night, he was unable to fall asleep. He could hear a great commotion, as if many people were talking, even though nobody was in there.
I guess you have to take the bad with the good.
It was now three full weeks since Ino Heitaro’s haunting began. Pretty much anybody would need a break by now. Even with all of his bravery, surely Heitaro must be starting to crack?
Heitaro decided to read a book to clear his mind. Unfortunately, there was no way he was going to read uninterrupted…
The shadow of a person appeared on the wall in the light from his lantern. The shadow was so clearly cast that Heitaro could make out every detail. It looked like a human reading a book out loud.
Heitaro watched the shadow’s mouth and tried to read its lips, but he couldn’t make out what it was saying…
Greetings yokai fans!
I’m back from Kyoto’s yokai festival! It was a load of fun. The costumes and passion of the attendees was just amazing, both the people visiting and the people participating. Because it was a night event, my poor quality phone camera just didn’t handle the task well. I took a few videos and took a few crappy shots in between manning my vendor booth, but you’ll get a much better view of the scene if you browse the hashtag #モノノケ市 on Twitter. Some guests with professional level cameras took some absolutely beautiful shots which are floating around Twitter right now.
I did take two videos of the actual parade, here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnQDHdAXMOk and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGAew84p6t8
Bonus points if you can name all of the yokai appearing! 😉
Now, on to today’s episode:
On day twenty, a stunningly beautiful servant girl came from a nearby household to visit Heitaro.
What a pleasant turn of events! She even brought a box of bean cakes as a present.
The young lady sat with Heitaro and two of them chatted for some time. She was so beautiful that Heitaro began to grow suspicious… Could this really be happening?
When it was time for her to leave, Heitaro saw her to the door, like a gentleman.
As soon as she stepped out of the front gate, she faded away! It turns out she was a mononoke too.
As for the bean cakes she brought, they actually belonged to Heitaro’s neighbor.
A mononoke and a thief!
On the 19th day, a friend suggested that all of this occurrences were illusions perpetrated by a mischievous tanuki or kitsune. He suggested that Heitaro set up traps to capture the troublemaker.
However, the yokai saw right through his plan. They disabled all of the traps and threw them up onto Heitaro’s roof!
When the trapmaker heard what had happened, he grew afraid. If it had truly been a kitsune or tanuki, they would have been too afraid to even approach the traps. No, the real culprit must be something far more fearsome!